Intel Corporation
Founding and History Intel was founded on July 18 1968, with the singular purpose of making semiconductor memory more practical. Look here for a full list of Intel Microprocessors Subsequently, shortly before the conclusion of 1971, Intel released it's first chip, the Intel 4004 Processor. Shortly after it's release, Intel released the Intel 8008 Processor in 1972, capable of twice the performance of the 4004 chip. In 1974, The Intel 8080 was released, and became the power behind the very first personal computer, called the Altair. In 1976, the Intel 8085 was released. The Intel 8086 surfaced in 1978. In 1979, Intel released the Intel 8088, which caught the attention of IBM, who chose to use Intel's 8088 Processor as the base in their new Personal Computer system. In 1982, Intel released the Intel 80186, and the Intel 80286 processors, often shortened now to just '186' and '286', respectively. In 1985, Intel uncovered it's codenamed P3 Chip, called the 386 often shortened to i386, which heralded the birth of the IA-32 Instruction set. In 1986, Intel released the 486. In 1993, Intel released their new Pentium range of Processors, for the Socket 7 Market. They added to this range in 1995, when Intel released the MMX Instruction Set, and then, in the same year, ported the Pentium Architecture to the Socket 8 Motherboards, in the form of the Pentium Pro. They followed this up by intoducing the Pentium II in 1997. In 1998, Intel further extended the functionality of the Pentium II for the Server market, thus creating the Pentium II Xeon. In 1999, Intel began to cater to the Budget market with the Celeron line of processors. In the same year, Intel unleashed the Pentium III processor, armed with 70 new instructions, codenamed KNI, later named SSE. And again, Intel once again catered for the Server market by releasing the Pentium III Xeon at the end of 1999. In 2000, Intel shifted processor technologies to Netburst, and the Pentium 4 Range was born, along with the SSE2 instruction set. Intel later made the SSE3 Instruction set addition to the prescott core in 2004, and in early 2005, adding support for EM64T and the NX Bit to the Pentium 4. In 2004, Intel also expanded their Celeron range with the Celeron D, later adding support for EM64T and the NX Bit in 2005. In 2001, Intel once again cloned the majority of the Pentium 4 microarchitecture, and created another Xeon chip. However, this chip was only called the Intel Xeon, completely missing out the Pentium 4 in it's naming scheme. Intel, by 2001, were in a pact with Hewlett Packard to create a high-performance 64-Bit chip for use in the Server Market, creating the IA-64 Instruction set. This chip was called the Itanium. In 2002, they created the Itanium 2 chip. In 2003, Intel shifted it's attention to the Pentium M, a low-power chip designed for laptops, based on the Pentium III microarchitecture. Intel also has Mobile varieties of it's Celeron (Celeron M) and Pentium 4 (Pentium 4-Mobile) processors.